ERAFP presents its 2014 voting policy

Paris, 28 January 2014 – In accordance with the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), of which it is a signatory, the French public service additional pension scheme (ERAFP) has developed – and updated yearly since 2012 – guidelines for shareholder engagement that include a policy on voting at shareholders’ meetings.

For the 2014 season, ERAFP's voting policy now explicitly covers environmental and social issues, by:

• calling for the publication of detailed, exhaustive extra-financial reporting,
• adopting the principle that resolutions of an environment or social nature should be analysed.

As regards governance aspects, ERAFP decisions include:

• aligning its recommendation on increasing the proportion of women on boards with that of the European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding (30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020), with an intermediate target of 25% for 2014.
• strengthening its criteria for evaluating executive pay practices: these notably include a new benchmark defining the maximum socially acceptable level of remuneration as the equivalent of 50 times a company's median salary.
• continuing to promote the concept of the responsible dividend, by weighing dividend growth against the company’s self-financing capacity and the evolution of payroll expenditure.

These guidelines, which are implemented in accordance with the Scheme's fiduciary duty towards its 4.5 million public servant beneficiaries, can be downloaded in the Socially Responsible Investment section of the RAFP website (www.rafp.fr).